Expressions of Mood in Cinematic Adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s novels The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley

Abstract

The thesis sets out to explore the ways that mood is adapted from Highsmith’s novels The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and The Price of Salt (1952) to Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Todd Haynes’s Carol (2015), respectively. The aim is to show the diverging ways in which the novels and the films express the quintessential Highsmith story through mood, and to show how these diverging forms of representation affect the overall experience of the stories. The discussion on the relationship between novels and their film adaptations reveals a traditionally ingrained expectation that film adaptations must fulfill a certain degree of fidelity to the novel. This view holds that film adaptation, as an interpreter, is in a form of artistic commitment to literature as the original source. The main goal of the film is then to pass on the literary work into new artistic territory while preserving the core idea and ‘essence’ of the original work. The thesis aims to shift the course of the discussion of adaptation away from the criterion of fidelity toward a discussion of the ways that these two art forms may in fact complement each other by being a part of a dialogical process between a representation and its source material. I argue in my thesis that the concept of mood, as a technique in literature and stylistic device in cinema, is essential in conveying the feeling of a distinct literary and cinematic world in Highsmith’s stories. Secondly, I argue that the aesthetic dimension of the films emphasizes an expression of moods through which the characters and audience can intuitively navigate the films’ meaning and emotional communication.